Avengers Tower
by Karma Rue Lovegood Everdeen
Summary: When Toni first took Bruce back to Stark Tower he never intended on moving in. But those labs are ever so tempting and it would be good to have some human company who isn't scared of him for once. Prequel to There's Always A Catch


Avengers Tower

**A/n – This was chosen for the 600****th**** review mark and as it was next chronologically and I had an idea for it I decided to get into the swing of things that I should do this first.**

Bruce probably should have seen it coming a mile off. Toni had been saying as often as she could throughout this Loki business that he should come back to Stark Tower and work in her labs. He'd often been tempted to go because it had been far too long since he'd been in an actual lab and on the helicarrier he had realised how much he had missed it. And Toni had told so many stories about how much better her labs were that he was certain they would be the scientist's Holy Grail. But he couldn't give in to the temptation because he knew just how dangerous he could be when confined to one place.

Then Toni went and pulled this on him. She was supposed to be giving him a lift to the airport after they had finally saw the end of the Loki situation as Thor took him back to Asgard using the Tesseract. All of his bags were in the car and he was mentally prepared to go back to the slums in India when Toni had stopped the car outside of Stark Tower which was still under renovations.

"_Toni!" _Bruce sighed knowing that he was about to be subjected to another conversation about why he should stay in New York.

"I'm not going to say anything," Toni told him, "I'm just giving you a tour. Because come on even if I haven't been able to talk you into seeing you really don't want to go without seeing the labs do you?"

"Fine," Bruce said quickly, "but you have to get me to the airport in time for my flight."

"Flights are always late anyway," Toni said with a shrug, "according to JARVIS you have at least a couple of hours before your plane will even make it into La Guardia."

"Of course you would look that up," Bruce said as Toni used her key card to let herself into the building and held the door open so he could get through. One of the elevators was shut down obviously due to structural damage higher up but apparently there was one that just went to the labs that hadn't sustained any damage. Toni led him to the very back of the reception area and used a second key card to open the first set of doors as well as a verbal passcode she gave JARVIS to open the second set.

"I don't like people interrupting me when I'm working," Toni told him, "Piper is keyed in so he can reach me if he absolutely has to but normally he uses the other lift anyway."

Bruce figured that probably meant that JARVIS was recognising the voice of the person who spoke as well as the code because Toni hadn't exactly whispered it. And it would be just like Toni to put in three layers of defence when someone who was trying to break in was only expecting two. Unless you tried to break in you wouldn't know that the second door was also voice activated and by then you would already have triggered one of the countless traps Toni was bound to have installed. She was that kind of person.

For an elevator that was just designed to take them to Toni's labs Bruce was surprised by the sheer amount of buttons that it had. Mind you Toni had already proved to be someone who didn't do anything by halves. There were eleven floors in total in the elevator that was solely dedicated to lab access. There was also a lock at the very bottom that was probably how you gained access to the more private labs. Toni hit button number 7 and the elevator set out upwards at a startling speed. Seeing that Bruce was feeling a little sick due to not being used to moving that fast Toni told JARVIS, "slow down the elevator speed please J. I don't particularly want Bruce to throw up all over my dress."

As Bruce regained his sense of equilibrium Toni told him, "this is one of the biology labs so I figured you'd want to see it the most out of the lot."

The elevator doors opened revealing the seventh lab that Toni owned and Bruce could feel his jaw dropping as he took in more and more of the tech that was just lying around. Some of the most sophisticated things on the market that weren't Stark tech had been stripped down for parts and then been thrown in the bin. He would have given anything to have some of that stuff in Calcutta and at Stark Industries it was common waste.

He was itching to run over and start one of the many experiments he had been longing to do for years that needed proper equipment but he knew he shouldn't. He only had two hours and some of the experiments he wanted to run would take two days instead. He looked back at Toni to see the slight smirk on her face and knew that she had been expecting this to happen.

"I'll stay here for an hour and work on one thing I've wanted to do," Bruce said giving in, "then you need to come back and drive me to the airport. That's non-negotiable."

"Of course Bruce," Toni said before exiting the lab smirking and hitting the button in the elevator for lab number 10. There was no way Bruce was going to be able to bring himself to leave in an hour and Toni would finally have someone around who understood her.

"JARVIS," she told her AI, "set aside some rooms in the construction that we can easily Hulk-proof. That's going to be Bruce's main motivation to leave and if I can stop that from being an issue he should stay. Lord knows the man deserves a proper room and food after living where he has been for the past few years."

"Of course ma'am," JARVIS said, "may I suggest the old sitting room on the fifteenth floor and the testing room on the twenty fourth floor as they would both make excellent places to be renovated."

"Sounds good," Toni said, "while you're at it convert the seventh floor hospital bay and the nineteenth floor games room. And get one of the many people here renovating the rooms to fix up a floor for Bruce as soon as possible because he's going to need it."

With that Toni exited the elevator and resumed work on one of the projects she had been absorbed in before Phil had come into the tower and officially recruited her for the Avengers Initiative. It would only take her about an hour to finish at which point she would keep her promise to go up and check on Bruce.

And indeed she did only he found himself not nearly as enthusiastic to leave as he had been an hour ago. He had managed to finish up the project he had wanted to work on for a long time and had figured out that a lot of his work had several different areas that he could apply it to. If he was interrupted now he would probably forget many of the facts that were vital to making those discoveries and this experiment would have been for naught. "I'll just catch the next plane out I think," Bruce said eventually, "there's one tomorrow right."

"Yes," Toni said, "already cancelled your booking. Have fun!"

**A/n – This is short because I really think that this would be what Bruce's introduction was like. Hope that you guys like it anyway regardless of length :) Love y'all!**


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